Posts Tagged ‘2013’

Last week at PAX East 2013, Capcom announced that Street Fighter 4 will be getting yet another update, and furthermore, is seeking fan feedback with regards to which balance changes they’d like to see for each character.

Since then, hundreds of players with varying skill levels have flocked to the Capcom-Unity forums in a bid to have their voices heard. Whether or not this is good for the game, who can tell at this point? However, I firmly believe that whilst there is likely to be a mound of near-sighted and otherwise terrible ideas, there will also be some absolutely golden suggestions scattered here and there, and I hope that Capcom can tell the difference between decent and awful.

My opinions

Whilst I don’t play the game so much these days, I still vigorously follow the competitive scene via streams of weekly events such as the Next Level Battle Circuit and most major tournaments, as well as participating in various message-boards and reading related articles. Due to this, I have a rather solid understanding of the current state of the game at the higher levels.

So, what do I believe should be changed in this update?

Generally, I feel that the Ver. 2012 update brought about the largest list of tournament-viable characters out of any previous iteration of Street Fighter 4, and that only minor tweaks need to be made among the vast majority of the cast.

However, there are some characters that I believe should definitely be nerfed. These characters are Akuma, Cammy, Fei Long and perhaps even Adon and Seth. They are all quite simply too strong – or have the potential to be. This is a direct result of their very abuse-able options, which provides them with unfairly high rewards for very little risk. I could go into specific details for each case, but I feel that my blanket statement is better suited to this post.

When you consider how close-knit the vast majority of the character roster seems to be in terms of balance, the nerfs to these top-tier characters would automatically boost up the tournament viability of everyone else. This type of forward-thinking is a key point that everybody needs to consider when making these balance suggestions, as it would be counter-productive to unnecessarily buff a character after their most troublesome opponents are nerfed.

All in all, it will be interesting to see which changes do end up making it into the next version of Street Fighter 4, but I am also somewhat anxious as I know that properly keeping the balance of 39 vastly different characters is a very daunting task to accomplish.

Yesterday evening, Sony finally held their much-rumoured Playstation 4 event, where many things were confirmed such as its ability to live-stream gameplay footage to friends, and presumably the internet.

Whilst I was both surprised and impressed at what I was hearing with regards to the streaming functionality, I always had one question running through my mind: “Why did they choose Ustream as the PS4’s streaming service and not the experience and install-base of Twitch.tv?”

For those that are unaware of the entire live-streaming world out there, Ustream and Justin.tv used to be toe-to-toe a few years ago as the two biggest broadcasting sites, however once Justin.tv split into two entities (one of them being the videogame-focused Twitch.tv), Ustream just got blown out of the water. Since then, Twitch.tv has had an absolute stranglehold on the videogame live-streaming market, where their user-base is so large that it is not uncommon for competitive gaming streams to break 100,000+ simultaneous viewers.

So knowing this, I naturally couldn’t understand why on earth Sony would opt for using a service other than Twitch.tv for streaming videogames.

However that wasn’t the end of my questions. The conference went on to show that all recorded footage can be uploaded to Facebook, without a single mention of the obvious choice of Youtube. Naturally, I then thought: “Why not Youtube? It has the largest user-base of people that actually want to watch videos, as well as the fact that it has far better upload speeds and the necessary ability to search for videos instead of only seeing content from friends.”

Now, with these two questions in my mind, I was trying to figure out what could possibly be stopping Sony from picking the two obvious platforms (especially since Twitch.tv can already upload footage directly to Youtube). To which I have come up with four possible reasons:

Twitch.tv and Youtube were both too expensive to obtain as partners and/or Ustream was tempting in a “we can both help each other to grow” kind of way.

Twitch.tv and Youtube simply did not want any part of this venture for whatever reason.

Sony simply failed to mention Youtube, but it will be supported.

Somebody else (maybe Microsoft) has beaten Sony to the punch and has already claimed Twitch.tv and Youtube as partners for a live-streaming service that is set to rival the PS4’s.

Whilst it’s entirely possible for numbers 1 to 3 to be the case, the most interesting prospect would be if number 4 was true. Could Microsoft be cooking up a rival service that would (potentially) have greater expertise and muscle to crush the PS4’s offering? Or is all of this speculation just completely off-base?

Anyway, whilst I didn’t reach any particular conclusion in this post, I just thought that it was an interesting point to address and hopefully things will become clear (such as Microsoft’s plans) at this year’s E3 event in June.

Platform: Xbox 360
Time Spent: Around 10-20 hours.
Completion: Both main stories & a whole bunch of online multiplayer matches.
Review Spoilers: Nothing that’s not found out within an hour of playing.

Platinum Games has an impressive history of creating 3rd person action games with immensely enjoyable combat experiences, and Anarchy Reigns is no different. Whether you’re cleaving through wave after wave of the equivalent of the Star Trek red shirts, or are brutalising a giant mutant with one of the game’s many cinematic-style executions, the game is undeniably satisfying at times.

The gameplay usually revolves around traversing an open area, whilst beating on whoever or whatever gets in your way. To accelerate this process, not only are the areas littered with various objects that are just waiting to be hurled at whichever poor target whose day you wish to ruin, but each character also has a crazy over-the-top “Killer Weapon”, such as positron arm/leg blades, giant flame-spewing gauntlets, and even a giant dual-chainsaw-mounted bionic arm. Rounding off this experience is the existence of potent environmental hazards, which can occur at any moment – such as a military bombing run, a giant killer robot entering the fray, or even a tornado sweeping through the map.

For all of its craziness and excitement on the gameplay front, those that are looking for a deep and engaging single player campaign that complements this are going to be disappointed. Whilst it tries to weave an interesting tale by offering two different sides of an intertwining story, it simply boils down to being little more than “In a distant future that has been ruined by nuclear war, Person A and Person B both seek Crazy Person C – with slightly different motivations”. Throw in some rather over-the-top characters, some hilarious dialogue and some rather silly reasons to fight, and that’s pretty much Anarchy Reigns’ story mode in a nutshell.

Despite how lacklustre the story mode is, it’s within the multiplayer that this game truly shines, and leaves you wondering if the single player campaign was just an afterthought. At its core, the combat is simple enough for casual players to be able to mash buttons and enjoy the resulting carnage, yet deep enough for the truly competitive-minded gamers to invent longwinded combos and impressive tactics that allow them to assert their dominance over others. This added dimension of having multiple human players completely transforms the experience from a repetitive grind against generic enemies, to one of intensity and survival – with pride on the line. Anarchy Reigns also features a plethora of multiplayer modes, from your standard 16-player deathmatches, to your typical capture the flag, to even an interesting sport-styled ball game – there’s something for everyone, and each mode is a frenzied fun fest.

Whilst the graphics aren’t anything to write home about, it is worth mentioning the sound of the game. From the energetic soundtrack that complements the crazy gameplay to the delicious meaty thuds of fist-to-flesh, Platinum Games were right on the money in this department.

All in all, Anarchy Reigns is a solid game that was an unfortunate casualty of a lack of marketing – but give it the time of day and you’ll be rewarded with a chaotic experience that has been surprisingly lacking in this console generation.

Tecmo Koei has announced that they are porting Ninja Gaiden 3: Razors Edge from the Wii U and bringing the experience back to the Xbox 360 and PS3 on April 2nd for North America and April 5th for Europe. This new port will add even more content, such as costumes for those that enjoy customisation options as well 25 extra challenge missions. Considering that the Wii U version already added a whole host of new content as well as drastically changing the game in various ways for the better, Razors Edge for the Xbox 360 and PS3 is looking like a very worthwhile purchase – especially for those that skipped the original Ninja Gaiden 3 release.

Here is a trailer for the original Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge for Wii U:

As one of the many people that avoided the original Ninja Gaiden 3 release back in March of 2012 (due to poor reviews and not enjoying the demo), I am hopeful that this update will transform the game into what I was expecting it to be the first time around.

Yesterday, Sony Playstation posted link on all of its social media channels, along with the words “See the future.” The link in question takes you to a new Playstation webpage that contains only a handful of details about an upcoming reveal, as well as an embedded teaser video.

The aforementioned details included the date and time – which will be the 20th February at 6pm EST, with absolutely no mention of the subject matter, which has resulted in some debate. However, most people (myself included) believe that the most likely outcome is that Sony will reveal their much-rumoured Playstation 4 (codename: Orbis).

Below is the video from the teaser site:

Personally, I’m excited at the prospect of just how soon the remaining 8th console generation challengers could be arriving in our homes.

Capcom has announced that the previously Nintendo 3DS-exclusive Resident Evil Revelations will in fact be getting a second release on all of the current gen systems on May 21st of this year. Considering that this is a handheld game that is being ported over to the more powerful home consoles, Capcom also revealed that the re-releases will receive HD graphical upgrades as well as having an improved online component. A few extra “bells and whistles” was also stated to be included in the upcoming release.

Here is the official trailer for the re-release:

Resident Evil: Revelations released last year for the Nintendo 3DS, where it received very favourable reviews, so bringing the experience to a wider audience is certainly a great move by Capcom.

It has been announced that Project x Zone – a previously Japan-only RPG for the Nintendo 3DS – will in fact be getting a release this coming summer in North America, Europe and Australia.

Project x Zone is a rather unique style of RPG that borrows elements from fighting games in order to make the combat both flashy and exciting, whilst rewarding the player’s skill for creating successful combos. On top of this, the game is primarily known for having multiple characters and universes from Capcom (Street Fighter, Devil May Cry), Namco-Bandai (Tekken, Tales of Vesparia) and Sega (Virtua Fighter, Valkyria Chronicles) – all interacting with each other in a giant fan-dream crossover story.

Here is an extended trailer for Project x Zone:

I have personally had my eye on this game since it was first announced as a Japan-only title, so I’m ecstatic to have the chance to play it for myself, in English.